I would like to call for a place to list some little things that surprise you about Lion. There are so many articles and lists of all the new features with information overload, I would rather focus this spot of the site on tiny delights with a note why it makes a difference to you.

Please one topic per answer, this isn't a race to enumerate everything that changed. This isn't the place for massive topics like the implications of FileVault 2 on your entire workflow - just a stroll past some little gems, fun oddities or subtle changes specific to Lion.

Answers must relate to why or how you use the feature - links to official tips and tutorials are great, but the intent is to collect little gems that affect how the system gets used. Expect answers that are not specific to lion or lack a personal use case to be heavily edited or deleted.

oh man, this is so neat. I wish I could up vote this twice!
– EimantasAug 6 '11 at 10:05

1

Sadly, this only seems to work for dragging to another Space on the same screen. If you drag the app's icon to a Space on a different screen, it highlights during the drag to suggest that it will move the windows there, but doesn't actually move them.
– KenMay 30 '12 at 17:17

Improved app switcher - pause at the end of the loop

It's interesting to see how now the ⌘TAB doesn't loop like crazy if you leave those keys pressed; instead it stops at the rightmost item and only if you press it again it will loop (once) until it reached the rightmost item again.

This avoid crazy looping when you get past the last item if you had a lot of apps open.

FileVault 2 encrypts all your data on the drive

(not just the home directory of users opting for FileVault)

Storing the keys in the Recovery HD and requiring an admin to unlock the volume before network and non-white-listed users makes this much more useful to both home users as well as lab settings where many people access one mac.

File Vault 2 does NOT encrypt the whole disk, but only a whole partition which is a serious difference. If you have more than a single partition you can have some partitions unencrypted and others encrypted. The fact, that there are multiple partitions cannot be hidden (as it would be with full disk encryption. If you don't know about this, you'll inadvertedly end up with unencrypted partitions. You also cannot add encryption to a partition with DiskUtility, this is only possible with /usr/sbin/diskutil.
– MacLemonAug 1 '11 at 12:30

@maclemon - you are correct it's not whole disk - I edited the "title" to still let new users think all their stuff is encrypted while not being "technically wrong".
– bmike♦Aug 1 '11 at 15:35

Title is much improved now, thanks. Still implies that the user's home resides on the system boot volume but it is safe to assume that this is the case for most users.
– MacLemonAug 2 '11 at 13:59

I don't know, but Tiger and Snow Leopard did that too. BTW: Windows does that as well I I guess Linux distros / Desktop environments as well.
– Tim BütheSep 2 '11 at 9:55

4

@Tim Büthe - Leopard and Snow Leopard and prior versions of OS X never did this, of course Linux and Windows did it using CUA shortcuts (C-x, C-c, C-v) That's not of use/interest when you're not actually talking about one of those platform. Please cut down the noise, we want signal here. The shortcut on Lion is new, and it's designed in such a way that it addresses Apple's "semantic issue" with "Cut", and instead is copy / move, and not cut / paste.
– ocodoSep 5 '11 at 1:47

2

The cut/paste method we had previously on Finder was drag/drop (for same Volume move) or drag/Cmd-drop (for moves to external or network volumes) - There was no keyboard equivalent.
– ocodoSep 5 '11 at 1:54

I like this feature, but I find the little button you have to click a bit finicky. Would rather it just showed the preview it when mousing over the link, but I guess there were performance issues doing it that way.
– calum_bOct 7 '11 at 16:46

Hide or filter System Preferences

The customize menu item is new and let's you visually slim down the main icon view.

If you only use a few of the preferences, you can hide most of them from view and have quick access to them all by clicking and holding on the Show All button until the alphabetical full list is drawn.

Local Time Machine snapshots

When not connected to your primary backup drive, time machine can make use of the local hard drive for backing up changes. Yes, I know it doesn't produce any real reliable backup since it's on the startup disk, but it gets merged into the main backup when you connect and preserves the backup history. It's a nice improvement to TM.

This feature will police itself and start to clean up local backups when the free space on your local drive reaches 80% full / 20% free space. As the drive fills, the duration of local backups gets shorter and shorter. This really is working well in practice and I have yet to see any slowdowns with this enabled.

Although it won't save me from a hard drive failure, it sure is nice to be saved from myself or (my nephew) when I'm away from my second drive. This is a delightful addition alone and together with versions for narrowing my ability to lose work done on a mac.
– bmike♦Aug 1 '11 at 15:47

Oddly enough, this wasn't turned on by default for me when I upgraded... I had to turn it on myself via the command line (sudo tmutil enablelocal).
– calum_bOct 7 '11 at 16:44

1

FYi for others, you can tell if local backups are enabled in the Time Machine prefs. If enabled it will say something like "local snapshots as time permits". More info in the unofficial FAQ.
– studgeekJan 16 '13 at 13:42

Multitouch in Safari

This is hard to describe but Apple made Safari feel like mobile Safari and it's great. When you scroll past the length of a page it bounces like mobile Safari. You can double tap with two fingers to zoom in on a column and ignore the ads or you can use Safari reader to do the same. Also there is a nice animation when you swipe left and right to navigate forward and back. The the end of this video shows the animation.

QuickTime saves audio recordings as M4A.

QuickTime audio recordings are now saved as M4As, instead of MOVs. This makes is so much easier to use the sound in movies and GarageBand rather than having to use a tool to extract the audio track before using it.

Yearless Birthdays

Want to keep track of your friends/family birthdays? Addressbook now lets you add just the month and the day so you don't have to guess how old they are or add a generic year like 2000. These birthdays will then display nicely in iCal to remind you. Makes life nicer for me! :)

You can keep selecting individual files and ranges this way all you want. This was working well in windows but never worked on Mac before Lion.

EDIT: This is not new to Lion, actually. I didn't know this either until I started to share this with friends, but they've insisted, and I've just confirmed, that this behavior was also possible in Snow Leopard.

This is in list view, I suppose. In icon view (also on Leopard, I believe), you can drag a "lasso" with the mouse to select, then hold cmd or shift and drag another lasso to select more.
– Henrik NAug 1 '11 at 17:35

Multiple SMB share operations are queued rather than parallel

I often copy files around from my media machine in the living room to my laptop. Previously, if you selected a bunch of files, then a few more, then a few more -- the different batches would be done in parallel, slowing each of them down. Now, in Lion, they're queued such that one batch starts when the previous one is completed.

If you can't see those menu items, be aware that they are only visible when you actually have multiple desktops (spaces).
– Peter ŠtibranýJul 25 '11 at 18:16

Indeed - that is also a thing of beauty (to me). There is no need for options until there are more than one desktop defined!
– bmike♦Jul 25 '11 at 18:38

2

It's nice to have a way to easily bind an Application to a space that way. It's terrible that Apple took away the whole list view so now I have to check each and every Application manually by itself, instead of being able to look up all bound Applications.
– MacLemonAug 1 '11 at 12:35

Smart Zoom on a two-finger double tap

Once you enable (or verify) the system-wide preference, two-finger double tap to zoom in Safari. It lets you zoom into the content of a web page, just like in Mobile Safari. Coupled with full screen mode, it is really easy to resize the page content to fill the screen.

The counter point to this: if you use "tap with two fingers" for secondary clicking disabling Smart Zoom will speed up response time. With Smart Zoom enabled there is a short delay before the secondary click is registered.
– Samuel Mikel BowlesSep 12 '11 at 15:11

@Samuel: Yep, I asked if anyone had any tips on that over on super user, though I ended up answering my own question. I should probably have asked it here instead... superuser.com/questions/319229/…
– DouglasSep 13 '11 at 13:06

Window/dialog open animations

These animations are elegant and work well when other transitions are in play.

Also a tip, holding ⌥ Option while clicking on a space in mission control switches the mission control view to that space rather than switching to that space normally. This allows for multiple window management operations in one use of mission control

Jonathan you don't get it, try it and see what i mean. Open mission control and option click on another space, instead of activating that space as the current one, it just shows you it allowing u to manipulate it's windows in one mission control operation
– AlexanderJul 29 '11 at 21:09

1

I didn't like this, use defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSAutomaticWindowAnimationsEnabled -bool NO to disable.
– joerickJul 31 '11 at 16:58

1

Anyone know a defaults command to get rid of the spaces-switching animation? It's really annoying to have the desktop icons fade out and in again each time I switch. Also it takes more than a second each time which is way too long for me.
– MacLemonAug 1 '11 at 12:37

Mission Control enables new workflows

(whilst frustrating some existing workflows)

My wife was very positively pleased with how Mission Control improves her workflow. MC window grouping, MRU in App Exposé and Spaces management are exactly what she wants.

I have been very negatively surprised at how much Mission Control is a regression for my workflow. It feels like I'm back to the awkward Tiger/Leopard days. I was really flying at window management with Snow Leopard Exposé and App Exposé, minimized windows in app icons and fixed spaces. I find Mission Control lacking in many areas (see my questions for details).

Mission Control fails to scale if you have many windows per application as windows get align-stacked with more than three windows per application. Spreading an application windows with the zoom-in gesture ought to help but does not as they don't spread apart enough nor show minimized windows. Besides one can't work around those limitations by going to the full-spread out App Exposé from Mission Control or preventively handle windows by minimizing them and having them show in Mission Control.

The primary downside is for workflows that expect to go to a space by number or place in the ordering. This is a big interruption for people that don't want Mission Control reordering spaces.

Luckily this reordering can be disabled and you can assign shortcuts to go to existing spaces too.

Oh god this. I actually rolled back to snow leopard just because I find mission control unusable for managing lots of windows.
– Fake NameJul 22 '11 at 21:41

Like any big UI change - Mission Control can be hard for people not wanting change or interfering with long-held habits. What about Mission Control makes your wife smile - why have it in this list? How is it better (if at least for her case)
– bmike♦Jul 25 '11 at 18:52

I strongly disagree that MissionControl helps workflow. It takes away spacial orientation in spaces for linearly lined up spaces. It takes away to have a spaces overview AND Exposé at the same time. All the windows are now stacked (similar to Window's Flip-3D) which obstructs all windows instead of giving you a good overview. It changes Focus (and applications) when entering and leaving. I personally consider MC the worst UI Apple has forced upon us in years. A HUGE productivity hindrance for me.
– MacLemonAug 1 '11 at 12:34

I prefer the way apps are stacked - it is much more visually organized than the grid if you have many windows. Also App Exposé is still there, as a hot corner or shortcut.
– Paul EcclesAug 1 '11 at 14:40

I think MC will take getting used to but I discovered that control + ↓ displays all open application windows.
– markAug 15 '11 at 9:33

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